The season of cosy blankets and hot chocolate by the fire is upon us, and if you're planning on stopping in and keeping warm, Netflix has prepared this year's round of Christmas movies.
Netflix’s new big Christmas special for 2023 is, Best. Christmas. Ever!, released on 16th November, however experts at RANT Casino gathered global monthly search volumes for the highest rated Netflix Christmas movies to reveal which others will be the most popular this festive season.
Top 15 most popular Netflix Christmas movies
Rank | Movie | IMDb Rating (/10) | Average Global Monthly Search Volumes |
1 | The Noel Diary | 6.1 | 117,400 |
2 | Holidate | 6.1 | 94,800 |
3 | Christmas with You | 5.6 | 88,900 |
4 | Love Hard | 6.3 | 52,300 |
5 | The Christmas Chronicles | 7 | 41,050 |
6 | Single All the Way | 6.2 | 37,100 |
7 | The Princess Switch | 6.1 | 33,240 |
8 | El Camino Christmas | 5.7 | 21,100 |
9 | A Christmas Prince | 5.8 | 20,300 |
10 | Scrooge: A Christmas Carol | 6.2 | 17,350 |
11 | Christmas Inheritance | 5.7 | 16,510 |
12 | Klaus | 8.2 | 16,410 |
13 | Operation Christmas Drop | 5.8 | 16,120 |
14 | Let It Snow | 5.8 | 14,100 |
15 | Holiday in the Wild | 6.2 | 13,200 |
Now, as you may know, I'm a big fan of Christmas films and so I watched all of these which means I can tell you which are worth getting comfy for.
The Noel Diary takes first place for the most popular Netflix Christmas movie, with a whopping 117,400 average monthly searches. Released in 2022, the movie tells a heartfelt Christmas story about a writer who goes back home to settle his mother’s estate and finds a secretive diary that sends him on an unexpected path. While the romantic movie got thousands of searches, it holds an average IMDb rating of 6.1/10. Like many Christmas films, it was predictable, but worth watching.
In second place is Holidate, which managed to generate a total of 94,800 average monthly searches. The romantic comedy follows the story of two strangers, played by Emma Roberts and Luke Bracey, who decide to be one another’s platonic plus ones over the holidays, but feelings quickly get involved. Just like The Noel Diary, Holidate has a 6.1/10 IMDb rating. Another one that is actually quite good.
With 88,900 average monthly searches (5,900 less than Holidate), Christmas with You comes third. This holiday movie is focused on a pop star who needs an escape and finds herself in a small town, where she manages to find inspiration and possibly, love as well. The movie was released in 2022 and has a rating of 5.6/10 on IMDb. I wasn't keen on this one. Unbelieveable and the couple had no chemistry - pass.
Following in fourth is the Netflix Christmas special Love Hard, with 52,300 average monthly searches (36,600 less than Christmas with You). Starring Nina Dobrev as the main character, Natalie Bauer, the movie is about a writer from Los Angeles who falls for a guy on a dating app and flies all the way to the East Coast to meet him, only to find she’s been catfished. Boasting a 6.3/10 IMDb rating, Love Hard makes for a great lighthearted Christmas watch. I like this one. I saw it last year, and it was still great this year.
Rounding off the top five, with 41,050 average monthly searches (76,350 less than The Noel Diary), is The Christmas Chronicles. which follows a brother and a sister on their mission to catch Santa on camera. The Christmas Chronicles came out in 2018 and has the highest IMDb rating of all movies in the top 10, 7/10. I do like this one, a modern day Santa classic.
From the others, Single All The Way is quite watchable. Predictable, but I think the first gay Christmas rom com I've seen. I'd also recommend Christmas Inheritance, Let It Snow (which is like a teenage American Love Actually in that the characters lives are interwoven), and finally Holiday In The Wild - still a predictable romance, but in a beautiful setting.
The Christmas Prince and Princess Swap I'd give a miss. If you've seen one you've seen them all. I couldn't get in to Operation Christmas Drop. Scrooge was OK, but not the best version. I'm not a fan of Klaus. El Camino Christmas was the only one i switched off - try it if you like your action stuff or Breaking Bad.
Happy Viewing
Love T x
Methodology
RANT Casino sought to find out the most popular Netflix Christmas movies.
A seed list of the 20 highest rated Netflix Christmas movies was extracted from IMDb.
Following, search analytics tool, Ahrefs, was utilised to collect data on the average global monthly search volumes for each of the movies, by using search variations, such as ‘movie title’, ‘movie title netflix’, ‘movie title year’, in order to obtain accurate results.
Movies were then ranked in descending order, based on the amount of average global monthly search volumes they had generated.
Data was collected on 7 November 2023 and is subject to change.
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